At an earlier, benighted time in our nation’s history, as historian Michael Beschloss pointed out the other night, Southern Democrats walked out of the party convention in protest of an African-American preacher taking the podium. Last night the party nominated an African-American as its standard bearer, a man who will be, must be, the next President of the United States.
Yes, it’s important to resist the self-congratulatory impulse, the facile idea that Obama’s success means the racial justice struggle is over, case closed. But this week’s convention is more earth-shaking than I expected, truly a tell-the-grandchildren moment (I guess it would help to produce children first). Tonight my wife and I will join our fellow citizens at Independence Mall, in the seat of liberty, the birthplace of American democracy, across the street from where Obama delivered his campaign-defining speech on race, to watch him accept the nomination on the big screen.
We’re seeing the best and worst of America in these momentous days — the back-and-forth between the two is enough to give you whiplash. McCain is misrepresenting and lying about Obama’s national security stance. The reappearance of (running mate?) Mitt Romney is particularly hard to stomach, although it’s pretty clear that Biden would wipe the floor with him in a VP debate.
Then there are Obama’s opponents to the left, like Chuck T, an influential rap DJ and political poseur who has denounced Obama as a traitor to black America. “He’s not black, he’s bi-racial!” announced this sorry reactionary, earning a stern rebuke from Spike Lee. During a Denver performance, the rap duo dead prez (see my previous remarks here and here) called the Democratic convention “the Demon-cratic National Convention.” Think about that: To dead prez, the people making history in that hall this week (Obama included) aren’t just wrong, or not progressive enough or what have you. They’re demons. And dead prez’s idea of a just society? The police state of Cuba. Clueless and/or timid music critics continue to pay dead prez the compliment of calling them “politically charged.” They’re politically insidious and it’s time they got called on it.
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